Summer is here

Summer is here and so our our first veggies. I am always taken back when the radishes are ready for market because we quickly switch from planting and getting the farm ready for the public to harvest time. First it is the radish, second are the garlic scapes and then strait into flowers. It is hard to see but in this picture there is our first garlic scape poking out of it's sheith. This year we will be selling the scapes at Innisfail Growers Farmers Market Booths. You can use scapes just the same a garlic cloves, only earlier....

My girlfriend thought that we needed something red out in the U-pick for this season and I thought that a tool shed would be useful. so we married the two ideas together and came up with this, a red tool shed "Ray's Red Shed" We have most of the siding on, just need to frame a door and it will be ready.


It won't be long until the maze design for this year needs to be cut, but first we have to make sure the weeds are under control. Here we are using our "state of the art" wheel hoes to cut down some chick weed and lambs quarters. I think these pics were taken on Saturday and when we were out again this morning the sunflowers had doubled in size. It is hard to believe but the corn and sunflowers in the maze will grow up to 2-4 inches every day from now until we open the maze in 26 days.

Markets & Mud

It is June and June is the start of Market season. Unfortunately I do not have anything ready for the markets just yet. We should have radishes starting next week, if the sun decides to poke out of the clouds. Even though I don't have produce of my own, I was able to take fresh asparagus, rhubarb, tomatoes, onions, herbs & potted flowers all from the group of neighbours I work with, Innisfail Growers.

You can find an Innisfail Growers Booth at over 15 markets across central Alberta each week, where you can be assured fresh vegetables grown by local Farmers. This is a picture of me at Northlands market which I work every Tuesday from 3:30 - 7:00pm in the Calgary, Northlands Mall Parking lot. One of my customers and I are sampling some of Edgar Farms Fresh Asparagus and Rhubarb (don't worry Elna, I didn't really take a bit out of a bunch of your asparagus, but it did cross my mind...) Find a full list of markets Innisfail Growers attends at www.innisfailgrowers.com

Now for the MUD... We have lots of it at the moment. Anyone want to buy mud? I think this week it rained over 3 inches of rain, which happens to me more than we had all summer last year. But there is no point in complaining about the excess of rain, so I won't, as long as we get a bunch of sun to dry things out.

Excess rain isn't the end of the world. We had plenty of in door jobs for the staff. Our crew took out all the transplants and benches out of our little greenhouse and replaced them with cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers. I think they fit 90 tomatoes, 30 cucumbers and 20 pepper plants. Our CSA members will be enjoying these veggies in about 5 weeks. We will also be selling fresh fresh veggies in our u-pick and farm store this summer starting July 31st when we open our maze & U-pick.

Planting Season

May long is generally our key to start planting and this year was no exception. We did get the carrots, beets, parsnips and onions in last month, but once again our Alberta spring has been full of surprises. The first half of May was far warmer than what we are now experiencing, and that snow storm last weekend was a good reminder that their is no hurry getting those delicate vegetables into the ground too early.

But now it is June and everything, as usual, needs to be in the ground TODAY!!. We two boys from the local high school who work on the farm, planting a bunch of spuds yesterday, and our crew of ladies are busy planting and transplanting hundreds of perennials throughout the gardens.

This year we are growing 200 tomato plants to supply our U-pick, farm store and Community shared Agriculture Vegetable Delivery. Plans are to have the bulk of the plants in our greenhouses, planted directly into the soil. They are starting to bloom in their pots, so I think it is time to get them in the ground.

Finally for this post a note on our Tulips. They are looking fantastic, nice and tall, full of colour and are lasting for ever. Unfortunately we will not have any for sale. These in the picture are right beside my house, protected from Bambi, who ate the 4000 we had growing out in the gardens.. I am sure it would have made for a great picture, but not so great for flower sales. We might have to move all the tulips next to the house, or buy a really big dog next year to keep the deer away.

Greenhouse

It has been over a month since we fired up the stove in our new greenhouse and I am continually amazed at how well everything has been growing.

We are trying to do everything from seed to harvest with out synthetic fertilizers this season, so it has been a bit of a learning experience. I will have to admit that we did use up some old bags of Promix BX, which does contain synthetic micro nutrients. We only did this because I had the bags and didn't want to throw them in the garbage. We are now starting to create our own potting mix with a combination of peat and compost. I will keep you posted on how well it works.

I found a product called fish agri, which I am told is used to supply nutrients to the growing seedlings prior to transplant, which I was told is needed in greenhouse production. Admittedly I was quite skeptical that this brown fishy mixture was going to be the answer to growing without synthetics, especially after the first application stunk up my greenhouse for a day.. But sure enough the onions and zinnias, which were starting to look a little yellow, are now green as ever..

Last year one of our potato customers gave us some heirloom black tomato seed that he had been saving each year. We grew a number of these plants in our u-pick last year, absolutely amazing flavour, them kept a couple fruit to save the seeds for our selves. From the 5 tomatoes we took seeds from last fall we now have over 100 plants in the greenhouse. We will be growing about 7 varieties in all this year, but one I am most looking forward to is called Chocolate Cherry.

What does a farmer do in the winter?

Did you ever wonder what we farmers do in the winter? Everyone knows there are many long days to be worked during the summer. But when there is snow on the ground, there is very little that can be done outside. Well, here are a few of the projects which have kept us from sitting idle throughout this unusual winter we are now escaping.

I have mentioned before that we do not use any synthetic chemicals in our flower and vegetable gardens. To accomplish this we pull weeds by hand and fertilize our u-pick fields with Compost. In total on the farm we spread approximately 150 tonnes of composted manure each year. It takes quite a bit of work to properly turn 250 tonnes of raw manure into usable compost, so to make the job a little easier this season we built this machine. This compost turner will mix up the piles of manure a couple times during the year to create an excellent product to put on our fields. This project kept us busy for the better part of a month with over 50 hours of welding alone. It still needs to get a paint job this summer, but for the mean time you can tell that the metal parts came off at least 5 old, unused machines on our farm.

Another idea I have had in my mind since moving back to the farm was to build a greenhouse. For the past 4 years we have worked with Leona from the Jungle Farm at Innisfail to start many of our flower transplants in her greenhouse. Now that we are starting a CSA vegetable delivery program, it was time to start all our plants right here on the farm. With the exception of the plastic, the Greenhouse was built from extra metal we had on the farm. Instead of heating the unit with a natural gas furnace we built a heat exchanger on the top of a wood stove which circulates air and water throughout the greenhouse during our cool nights.

Finally, one of the less know operations on our farm is the selection of over 30 varieties of Mail Order Seed Potatoes we grow for home gardeners. Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes. We built this machine which rolls the potatoes as they pass by so we can make sure the potatoes we package have no blemishes. If any of you grow a garden, we will be selling and shipping potatoes until the end of April.

Scarecrow Festival

This is our fourth year with the maze and second year with a pumpkin festival, however, it is only the first year we have found time to enter a scarcrow into the Innisfail Scarecrow Festival. Fortunately one of the Mexican men working for me this fall has experience making unique creatures out of corn. I have a picture on my face book of a large cat he made a couple weeks ago.

So I asked him to make a Scarecrow man and a little dog. Sure enough he did some amazing work and our scarecrow one first place in two categories. 1st in the Visiting Category and 1st the Most Creative Category, which we are very proud of.

Epiphanio is the main artist, although Roberto and I put some work into the display as well.

Epiphanio is the man up on the truck and Roberto is holding the Scarecrow

Pumpkin Festival

Summer has passed us by and we are now in Pumpkin Mode on the farm. This will be a second season hosting a Pumpkin Festival on the farm which is themed around the Halloween season.

Surprisingly the Sunflower & Corn Mazes are quite resilient and remain open and navigable until the end of October. The sunflowers have finished their bloom and their seed have matured. You are more than welcome to nibble at the seeds when traveling the mazes.

One very unique aspect to our festival is the large potato storage shed we convert into three indoor event rooms. Our farm store which is open all summer long. A kids Craft and Face Painting Room. Then last is our Pumpkin and lunch room. So even if the weather is undesirable, come inside and enjoy a warm break from the mazes.

Of course it is a Pumpkin Festival and what would a pumpkin festival be without Pumpkins, Pumpkins & more Pumpkins? Not too worry our pumpkin crop this year was absolutely fantastic and we harvested nearly 1000 ranging from small 3lb pumpkins to a record size for us at 45lbs
The Pumpkin Festival will be running Every Saturday & Sunday from 11am - 5pm in October. We will be closed if it is a snow storm, so if in doubt please phone before hitting the road. 403 224-3995 or toll free 1877 224-3939.